Market Leadership Award

Transcription

1 Market Leadership Award The Outbound Dialing Systems Industry NORTH AMERICA Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

2 Contents Background and Company Performance... 3 Industry Challenges... 3 Market Leadership... 4 Conclusion... 8 Significance of Market Leadership... 9 Understanding Market Leadership... 9 Key Performance Criteria Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards Research Methodology About Frost & Sullivan Copyright Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

3 Background and Company Performance Industry Challenges US companies are now losing more than $83 billion annually due to poor customer experiences, an effect compounded by the reality that it costs six to seven times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one. On average, estimates of the cost of attracting a new customer are up to $300 per person when incentives, discounts and marketing are taken into consideration. With information on companies and comparison between them readily available on the Web and mobile devices, and consumers much more likely to compare notes with friends and family through social networks, it s more imperative than ever for companies to improve the customer experience (CX) to retain customers, rather than to continually start over getting new ones. Outbound dialing systems are a key component of customer care that can make or break a customer relationship. These workhorses in the contact center were at first inception primarily used for outbound dialing to consumer lists for the purposes of accounts receivables management (ARM) and telemarketing sales. In the early days, R&D focused more on efficiency and cost control than it did on CX, targeting the fine-tuning of dialing algorithms and adding on features such as preview and predictive dialing. Consequently, the rapid adoption of these systems without the sophistication and regulation we have today gave the outbound dialing industry a persistently sticky reputation by consumers of being intrusive and annoying; saddling the industry with the moniker, Robocall, to reflect this perception. Successful companies in this market have risen above this perception by balancing the numerous challenges competing for development resources. They ve continuously embellished dialing algorithms, assisted and complied with government regulations on consumer protection and privacy, and focused on adding new functionality to increase customer engagement, sentiment, and satisfaction. The market for outbound systems also has faced the same challenge as the rest of the contact center premise systems market, with pressure from customers increasing preference to move their contact centers to the cloud. System providers have had to adapt quickly, ensuring that systems features are comparable to outbound cloud suppliers, and in enabling their system products to seamlessly integrate with other vendor offerings, both in the cloud and on premises. Finally, the majority of system providers also became cloud players themselves. Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

4 Market Leadership Noble Systems is one such supplier that has flourished under these challenging conditions, by offering the most feature-rich outbound dialing systems in the market that are also mirrored in the cloud. In 2017, Noble Systems continued gaining share in the cloud market, which is dominated by a few key players, while still gaining share in the premise market. For the sixth consecutive year Noble Systems maintained its leadership position, garnering 26.9% of the market, up from 22.3% in This strong performance is exemplified in the following key areas. Brand Recognition With just shy of three decades in the outbound dialing market, Noble s solid leadership position has only grown through the years with the addition of complete contact center functionality, starting with outbound dialing, and flowering into a rich suite of contact center applications on-premise, in the cloud, and as hybrid configurations. This broad contact center portfolio of omnichannel customer care solutions includes ACD, predictive dialing, blended processing, multichannel capabilities (e.g., , SMS, and Web), interaction analytics, decisioning, recording and monitoring, IVR, gamification, messaging, WFO, WEM, and workforce management (WFM). While its portfolio is a major contributor to success, tenured management and key strategic initiatives contribute equally to its leadership position. Foremost, at the helm of the company is Jim Noble, the company s founder, who has been in the contact center industry throughout his career. Not many companies in business for almost three decades can boast the same stability and quality of leadership. In fact, Noble enjoys one of the most tenured staffs in the industry with an average employee tenure in 2017 of 6.5 years, and more than one-quarter of its employee's celebrated 10 years of service or more; impressive considering the company s longevity. Further, the company has a solid reputation for being a leader in assisting the outbound dialing industry in the areas of regulation and legislation, often championing legislation that protects the industry and consumers as well. For example, Noble has numerous patented TCPA compliance solutions, which address issues such as the management of outbound calls placed to wireless numbers, and in enforcing FCC regulations. Similarly, its Secure Payment Assist application facilitates secure payment transactions by conferencing in the IVR at the point where a customer gives credit card information to an agent. This essentially removes the agent from the most sensitive part of the transaction, helping keep the contact center in compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations. The company s brand strength also is reflected in its impressive patent portfolio of capabilities including those in outbound dialing. In 2017 alone the company was issued 41 new patents to its portfolio, almost 30% more than the prior year, with 18 more issued in the first half of 2018 as well. In total the company now has over 170 patents with 40 or Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

5 more in review, in all areas of the contact center, from AI to outbound contact. As it specifically applies to the outbound market, many of those patents are around protecting consumers from unwanted outreach, incorporating customer preference for being contacted by companies, and also for providing features to protect companies deploying dialers from violating legal restrictions. Growth Strategy Excellence In past years Frost & Sullivan has noted that one of the keys to Noble System s growth success has been keeping a keen eye on changing trends in the industry and developing or investing in solutions that match and surpass those trends. Certainly the launch of Inbound 100 in 2016 is an example of this. This complete suite of contact center functionality includes ACD, predictive dialing, blended processing, recording and monitoring, IVR, messaging, interaction and data analytics, and workforce management. Inbound 100 also cemented the company's reputation of evolving from outbound leader to full service provider. Since its launch, over 90% of Noble customers have purchased inbound capabilities, not just outbound, which have allowed it to grow exponentially. In fact, in 2017 the company enjoyed a 25% growth in revenue and profit. Yet its growth strategy didn t end there. With an eye to one of the more powerful trends in the industry workforce engagement management (WEM) Noble set out to bolster its WEM solution set with the addition of gamification. After an intense survey of available solutions in the market, in early 2017 the company welcomed FidoTrack, one of the premier players in gamification, into the Noble family, enabling it to add rich functionality while greatly curtailing development time in this key area. Reworked and rebranded as Noble Gamification, and offering an integrated version along with a point-solution, this unique solution applies game mechanics and behavioral science across the generational spectrum to motivate employees intrinsically and extrinsically for the purpose of aligning agent activities with company goals. The launch of Noble Gamification dramatically increased the attention of existing customers and prospects. In the first 100 days after the acquisition of FidoTrack, Noble Systems fielded over 3,000 net new inquiries for gamification-. Implementation Excellence The company s Customer Open Feedback Forum, which was started in 2015 and occurs several times throughout the year, is one of the key components of its client services strategy. The feedback forum allows customers to come in and spend a day with executives to see all parts of the business in person, and provide feedback accordingly, which the company uses to help drive strategic plans. Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

6 Another key source of customer input is its Select Noble Advisors Group (SNAP). These regionally run advisory panels are appointed annually, and provide direct feedback throughout the year on its product strategy, roadmap and customer needs. Noble also hosts regional Select Noble Users Group (SNUG) conferences each year. The most recent North America event held in Florida in April 2018, eclipsed the previous year s event, and had hundreds of attendees for three days of meetings, sessions, and events, including those that focus on outbound dialing, proactive customer contact, and industry trends, including legislation. The company also provides high levels of support, working side by side with customers for as long or short as they require. The company has regional teams around the globe to offer localized expertise, and implementation includes the option of having a seasoned expert on-site, for short or long term engagements. This helps companies implement contact center applications and then grow their internal expertise, without having to add full-time staff. Purchase Experience Customers who purchase Noble's outbound dialers recognize that it is a leader in innovation in this space. The fact that in many cases its outbound dialing systems often sit alongside competitor s technology or over the top shows that it fills a need not easily met with other solutions. For instance, Noble OnQ manages campaigns that are being run over multiple contact centers using an assortment of ACDs (Avaya, Cisco, etc.), or Noble WFM is used within contact centers with existing competitive solutions. This allows customers with existing solutions to get the advantages of what Noble has to offer, without disrupting their existing environments, and gives them an entree to move completely to Noble if they desire. Customers also know that Noble solutions help them tackle the challenges they face for better customer service amidst declining budgets. A good example is Noble Contact AI - a powerful call-scheduling solution that helps Noble customers maximize the dollars generated per agent per hour, while keeping within their budgetary, compliance, and resource-allocation goals. It uses a patented predictive analytics engine that automatically optimizes daily outbound call schedules according to business rules and strategies. It combines data such as calling list and call history to automatically build predictive models, even if a record has never been seen before in the outbound calling queue. Products such as Contact AI can have a great impact on costs savings and operational efficiency. Another important purchase decision factor is that Noble Systems provides a high level of business agility through flexible deployment models. The company s decision to create a cloud version of its solution set off a single code base with premise is enabling customers to flexibly define their operations as they see fit. For instance, while many customers have made the move to the cloud, others have decided to stay on-premise, or leave some functions on-premise and others to the cloud in a hybrid deployment. This is particularly Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

7 helpful in quickly adding new capabilities, such as Gamification, which can be deployed quickly in the cloud, or moving to the cloud while maintaining some on premise functionality, such as call recordings, for company policy reasons. Ownership Experience Noble Systems' customers enjoy best of breed brand experience from the company, but also peace of mind in knowing that the functionality of the systems they buy are continually upgraded with new features, often at their request. This purposeful willingness to listen and solicit input from customers is a central part of the ownership experience. In fact, it s contributed to the company being able to claim one of the lowest customer churn rates in the industry, with less than 5% a year. As for innovation, beyond adding Gamification, the company has introduced several other significant solutions or enhancements to the portfolio in the past year. For instance, Noble Conversations Analytics and Conversations Analytics Now are highly scalable and flexible, real-time and post-call speech analytics solutions that analyze phrases and sentiment to make decisions. Noble uses speaker separation to analyze both agent and customer audio, and can analyze agent audio even when dual-party consent is refused. The solution can use dynamic content to control agent workflow using business rules, and provides configurable alerts. The solution is language model- and dictionary-independent and is available on-premises or hosted. The company claims that its real-time analytics is three times faster than its closest competitor, processing audio 50 times faster than dictionarybased competitors. The fact that a business user never needs to train a language model, with no tuning requirements, further differentiates the product. Customers are also ensured of the continued security and reliability of Noble's operations. For example, in 2017, it delivered % reliability across its seven data centers, and offers a 100% uptime guarantee of its services. The company also helps customers optimize the performance and productivity of their contact centers through its Advisory Services offerings. These include operational and strategic reviews of a company s current key performance indicators, workflows, and technologies, along with business goals and strategic plans, to provide customers with solid recommendations to identify and achieve KPIs, implement best practices, develop optimization strategies, leverage opportunities for improvement, and achieve improved productivity and efficiencies. Product Differentiation While Noble Systems continues to innovate across the entire portfolio, notable differentiation can be seen in outbound dialing and workforce engagement. For example, its Gamification solution was designed to satisfy core motivational requirements for workers. These include addressing basic needs such as monetary compensation, schedules, and tools; support requirements, such as recognition, rewards, and company transparency; the need to belong, including team building, peer-to-peer communication, Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

8 collective goals and mission, and empathy for peers; and the opportunity to grow, through elevated status, achievement, stretch goals, awards, training, and coaching. Also notable, besides numerous features involved within each of these components, is the platform's ability to gamify the entire company, not just agents. This increases engagement throughout the organization, which increases overall employee satisfaction. Competitions can also be created and modified quickly and easily, including adding a new person to the platform in less than a minute, anywhere in the world, greatly increasing business agility and results. The company also has features that tackle challenges within workforce management. For instance, Noble SmartAdherence is an application that ensures that agents are doing what they are scheduled to do, when they are scheduled to do it. The SmartAdherence feature uses Noble's WFM and Composer agent interface to automatically send notifications to the agent desktop for scheduled activities, notifying them of the activity and moving the agent to a pause (or appropriate) state so that they can stay on schedule. If the agent is on a call, the system will wait until the call has been completed to make the agent unavailable. In mid-2018 Noble further bolstered its WFM offering with the addition of a mobile app for agents, available on Android and IOS platforms. The app adds agent self-service within its ShiftTrack application, enabling agents to use a phone or tablet to do things such as shift bidding and trades, apply for overtime slots, or go to their home page and see messages. This type of innovation is in line with the growing demand for self-service and mobile solutions for consumers and workers. Conclusion Noble Systems has continued on its path of market leading excellence, with its sixth consecutive year of being market share leader with 26.9% of the market in outbound dialing systems. The company s depth of innovation in the outbound dialing segment and overall breadth of complementary contact center solutions are a few of the reasons that Frost & Sullivan is proud to bestow the 2018 Market Leadership Award for Outbound Dialing Systems in North America to Noble Systems. Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

9 Significance of Market Leadership Ultimately, growth in any organization depends upon customers purchasing from a company, and then making the decision to return time and again. Loyal customers become brand advocates; brand advocates recruit new customers; the company grows; and then it attains market leadership. To achieve and maintain market leadership, an organization must strive to be best-in-class in three key areas: understanding demand, nurturing the brand, and differentiating from the competition. Understanding Market Leadership Driving demand, strengthening the brand, and differentiating from the competition all play a critical role in a company s path to market leadership. This three-fold focus, however, is only the beginning of the journey and must be complemented by an equally rigorous focus on the customer experience. Best-practice organizations, therefore, commit to the customer at each stage of the buying cycle and continue to nurture the relationship once the customer has made a purchase. In this way, they build a loyal, ever-growing customer base and methodically add to their market share over time. Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

10 Key Performance Criteria For the Market Leadership Award, Frost & Sullivan Analysts focused on specific criteria to determine the areas of performance excellence that led to the company s leadership position. The criteria considered include (although not limited to) the following: Criterion Requirement Growth Strategy Excellence Demonstrated ability to consistently identify, prioritize, and pursue emerging growth opportunities Implementation Excellence Processes support the efficient and consistent implementation of tactics designed to support the strategy Brand Strength The possession of a brand that is respected, recognized, and remembered Product Quality The product or service receives high marks for performance, functionality, and reliability at every stage of the life cycle Product Differentiation The product or service has carved out a market niche, whether based on price, quality, or uniqueness of offering (or some combination of the three) that another company cannot easily duplicate Technology Leverage Demonstrated commitment to incorporating leading-edge technologies into product offerings, for greater product performance and value Price/Performance Value Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar offerings in the market Customer Purchase Experience Customers feel they are buying the most optimal solution that addresses both their unique needs and their unique constraints Customer Ownership Experience Customers are proud to own the company s product or service, and have a positive experience throughout the life of the product or service Customer Service Experience Customer service is accessible, fast, stress-free, and of high quality Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

11 Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices Frost & Sullivan Awards follow a 10-step process to evaluate Award candidates and assess their fit with best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity of the Awards are based on close adherence to this process. STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT 1 Monitor, target, and screen Identify Award recipient candidates from around the globe Conduct in-depth industry research Identify emerging sectors Scan multiple geographies Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all bestpractice criteria 2 Perform 360-degree research Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners Assess candidates fit with best-practice criteria Rank all candidates Matrix positioning of all candidates performance relative to one another 3 Invite thought leadership in best practices Perform in-depth examination of all candidates Confirm best-practice criteria Examine eligibility of all candidates Identify any information gaps Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates 4 Initiate research director review Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles Brainstorm ranking options Invite multiple perspectives on candidates performance Update candidate profiles Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper 5 Assemble panel of industry experts Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders Share findings Strengthen cases for candidate eligibility Prioritize candidates Refined list of prioritized Award candidates 6 Conduct global industry review Build consensus on Award candidates eligibility Hold global team meeting to review all candidates Pressure-test fit with criteria Confirm inclusion of all eligible candidates Final list of eligible Award candidates, representing success stories worldwide 7 Perform quality check Develop official Award consideration materials Perform final performance benchmarking activities Write nominations Perform quality review High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees successes 8 Reconnect with panel of industry experts Finalize the selection of the best-practice Award recipient Review analysis with panel Build consensus Select recipient Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria 9 Communicate recognition Inform Award recipient of Award recognition Present Award to the CEO Inspire the organization for continued success Celebrate the recipient s performance Announcement of Award and plan for how recipient can use the Award to enhance the brand 10 Take strategic action Upon licensing, company is able to share Award news with stakeholders and customers Coordinate media outreach Design a marketing plan Assess Award s role in future strategic planning Widespread awareness of recipient s Award status among investors, media personnel, and employees Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"

12 The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards Research Methodology Frost & Sullivan s 360-degree research 360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN methodology represents the analytical THE CHAOS rigor of our research process. It offers a 360-degree-view of industry challenges, trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies. Too often companies make important growth decisions based on a narrow understanding of their environment, leading to errors of both omission and commission. Successful growth strategies are founded on a thorough understanding of market, technical, economic, financial, customer, best practices, and demographic analyses. The integration of these research disciplines into the 360-degree research methodology provides an evaluation platform for benchmarking industry participants and for identifying those performing at best-in-class levels. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages more than 50 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the investment community from 45 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit Copyright This research is owned by Frost & Sullivan. No part of this research may be disclosed to external parties without formal written permission from Frost & Sullivan. Furthermore, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of Frost & Sullivan. Frost & Sullivan "We Accelerate Growth"